We are a rapidly expanding school network. We uses spreadsheets ("enrollment model") tracking student enrollment, teacher staffing level, student attrition, class size etc, and making forecast 2 to 5 years out. The Model is leveraged by pretty much everyone in the organization, e.g., recruitment, school construction, fixed asset planning, finance, etc. We are implementing a BI tool on the financial reporting side, linking it with our MS Dynamics and loading the budgets into it. People are asking why we can't use the BI tool to replace the Model for obvious reasons (spreadsheets don't have audit trail, error prone, frequent crashes, etc.), but I have some doubts on this: 1. Currently all the source data are manually input into the Model. We don't really have an ERP spilling out student & staffing data. 2. Frequent changes are made to the Model, adding a class, expanding & downsizing a particular school / staffing level, adding special program, etc. I just don't think any BI tool would provide that level of flexibility. Any thoughts and comments are highly appreciated.
Is Business Analytics tool a good fit here?
Answers
Anon,
If your Dynamics system can provide financial data into your BI tool, why not consider your SIS system (your student information system) to provide operational data about classes,schedules, enrollments, teacher levels, etc. And other systems may be needed to provide other data (e.g. asset information, staff salaries....).
If the BI tool supports modeling, then you can impose a discipline and a process to designing the model so that what you call frequent changes above become more like standard features of the model.
What is the BI tool you are considering? Maybe hold back on a decision until you establish what your modeling needs are.
We are in the midst of developing a SIS. Due to frequent issues / bugs / misses with the system, the owner of the enrollment model doesn't want to have anything to do with SIS. In addition, I doubt there will be resources available to build a link between SIS and BI tool, as there are more urgent issues to deal with on the SIS side.
Same thing on the staffing side. We are developing a HRIS but again that's a big unknown.
You may want to consider a hybrid approach where the source data is entered into a database that has some controls and audit capabilities and provides the source into
Anon
It's interesting that your organization ( a school network) is also in the business of designing, developing and maintaining software (SIS and HRIS are two that you mention). Neither are easy to do compared to ERP systems, in my experience.
I know that some